Hi!

Plz test and comment on my game so far. It's a rpg/adventure/sim game set in post-ww2. You're sort of a pirate!

Test especially the fights. Is it fun? Is the controls ok? Could something improve?

Other than fighting other ships you can visit some ports and trade and repair/refuel and some other stuff.

Click F1 ingame to toggle controls shown.

(latest download-link at last post)

time scale seems off - rate of fire vs movement rate vs ET for one update. lost my second engagement, and then noticed the game clock was running at one game day per real world second? WTF? the game should be realtime with accelerated time. or at a minimum, a "turn" should be something more appropriate for naval combat - say 5 minutes - not a year.

did notice you're doing turn rate for turrets - at least that's something.

right now it comes off as a clickfest fone app - might as well be bunnies and flowers, instead of battleships.

BTW, i love the map and graphics - satellite image for the map? I'm having a devil of a time figuring out maps for AIRSHIPS! but there, the map must correspond to a full 3d FPS type world (or the 3D wolrd must correspond to the map - to be more precise).

As combat is the heart of the game, you'll want to polish that up first.

Controls, targeting etc seem fine.

When the game is done, you'll want a tutorial.

may want to change "direction keys" to "arrow keys".

an overall impression of things running too fast, both on the strategic map and the combat map.

Start by fixing your time scale and then see where you're at.

not sure about the weapons representation. i only seemed to have two guns (turrets?). battleships typically don't have torpedoes. rockets are probably too new for the time period.

a quick glance at the data files indicates some crew positions that might be somewhat contrived, such as cook. a good cook won't use less rations, they will raise morale, but not enough to make a big difference by itself. only by fully modeling all effects on morale, and all moral effects on combat performance, would the cook ever possibly matter. and even then it would only be one straw, but it might be enough to break the camel's back. but only if you model everything on the camel's back - IE full morale effects.

and you do realize that sooner or later, every nation would be sending fleets to kill the player once and for all.

time scale seems off - rate of fire vs movement rate vs ET for one update.

What do you mean by this? Too fast movement? Too quick-firing guns? What is ET?

game clock was running at one game day per real world second? WTF?

It should be like 5 secs = 1 day on the map and nothing when in battle. When was it 1 sec= 1 day?

battleships typically don't have torpedoes. rockets are probably too new for the time period.

There is no battleships in the game yet. The torpedo on your frigate is for testing only, but many ww2 destroyers and cruisers had torpedoes (and will in my game as well). Rockets existed but was mostly for shore bombardment. I might add it for fun measure anyway though!

right now it comes off as a clickfest fone app - might as well be bunnies and flowers, instead of battleships.

What is the point of this comment? Its an arcadish game no doubt, this isnt a simulation. What is it you dont like? Too quick? Too unrealistic?

Thanks for your feedback so far Norman! Plz expand. Other people?

What do you mean by this? Too fast movement? Too quick-firing guns? What is ET?

ET or a "turn" is the amount of game time that is supposed to have elapsed during one update. if you're using "fix your timestep", it would be whatever DT is. for a more conventional game loop, it would be the amount of time one update is supposed to represent. this value is then multiplied by a time_scale, that translates between game time and real world time.

so lets say you run update at 30 hz. so every update, you move the ship and reload the guns for 1/30th of a second. so if the ship is moving at 20 knots, 20 knots = 37.04 Kph = 0.0034296296296... meters per update (check my math!).

i didn't look at the clock to compare movement rates to elapsed time - but you should. the reload rates seemed much faster than real time compared to the movement rates.

but all this should be trivial, just look up the specs for the uss new jersey, one of the last batttleships built. you''l get cruise speed, flank speed, time to flank speed, turn radius, rate of fire, etc. then just crunch out what that is per update.

well, nothing here about reload times...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armament_of_the_Iowa-class_battleship

but find a blow by blow account of the sinking of the HMS Hood. it will tell you at exactly what time each salvo was fired, and hit. we're talking reload times and flight times in minutes, not seconds here.

ok, found something...

http://www.navweaps.com/Weapons/WNUS_16-50_mk7.php

one gun, two rounds per minute. so about 30 seconds to load one gun. or about 1.5 minutes to load one turret. probably more. they have to switch from one gun to the next, and fire control must wait for all turrets to be ready before it can loose a salvo. So probably about 2 minutes between salvos. since you don't want the player sitting around while their battleship steams about and reloads in real time, you need accelerated time. that's where your time_scale multiplier comes in. set it to 10, and the game runs 10 times as fast, and you can now fire a salvo every 9 seconds, not every 90 seconds. accelerated time allows the player to run the game at whatever speed they are comfortable with, so its not too slow, and not too fast, its just right. accelerated time is typically implemented by performing multiple updates per render. but it may also be possible to monkey with ET and DT in a "fix your timestep" algo to do it.

by using real word stats as a guideline, you won't have to worry about movement and firing rates being incorrect.

When was it 1 sec= 1 day?

after the battle, before i exited the combat map. i figured that was just an anomaly. odds are the game was still running and i was just dead, that's all.

if battles are supposed to be real time, your reload times are way off. perhaps weapon ranges and movement rates as well. these ships could hit each other when they were no more than a spec on the horizon. they had the range, if you could see it, you could shoot it. right now you're more like near collision conditions, engaging enemy capital ships at ranges at hundreds of feet, not miles, or thousands of yards. the size of the ship graphics vs the distance between them is way off. one or both is out of scale. the size of the ships, the distance between them, the movement and turn rates, the turret turn and reload rates must all be closer to real to get a real naval combat feel to it. then just add accelerated time, or run at one or more specific accelerated time settings. that way you get real naval combat, but its not too slow, and thus boring.

your frigate

ah, ok. that explains the guns and torps.

What is the point of this comment? Its an arcadish game no doubt, this isnt a simulation. What is it you dont like? Too quick? Too unrealistic?

that the gameplay right now has no naval combat feel to it. you might as well be shooting bunnies with flowers or something.

it doesn't really strike me as arcade-ish per-se, unless you want to go that route. like many (most? all?) games, it could be fall at either end of the "arcade vs simulation" scale, depending on implementation.

yes, i feel its a bit too quick, at least at first. and definitely too unrealistic - might as well be bunnies and flowers. i also personally feel that's a bit of a shame, as the game could potentially be a rather cool ww2 naval combat pirate game.

you might want to consider two game play modes: arcade and simulation, with different rates and scales for the two. one time i did a game where a single #def in the source generated one of two different games, one a full tilt real time war game, and the second an arcade game with stages and levels. the last level of the arcade game was the first level of the war game. you may have one engine that could be used for both an arcade, and a simulation game. something like that might benefit from a heavy emphasis on data driven design. make the title screen and everything else necessary data driven, and one .exe could produce two games using different data sets. perhaps more than two, with different games featuring different regions, factions, units, and time periods. sort of like the total war series.

for arcade combat, what you have right now is just fine, speed, aiming, rate of fire, etc, all just fine. you could change it to bunnies and flowers and it would still work, so the basic arcade combat mechanics are sound..

if i were you. ii'd make an arcade version for casual gamers who don't know any better, and a realistic version for hard core gamers, so you cover the entire potential user base and don't leave any dollars on the table.

WW2 naval combat tends to appeal more to hard core than casual players. but arcade tends to appeal more to casual than hard core players, so a game with a hard core theme but casual game play may end up pleasing very few players. casual players won't consider it given the hard core theme: "its a war game! i have to think! i don't want to think! i just want to shoot stuff !", and hard core players will detest the arcade combat as overly simplistic, unrealistic, and child-like: "Gimme a f'ing break! this dude definitely don't know sh*t about naval combat!". This is why its so hard to write one title that appeals to both ends of the spectrum and all points in between. A given setting and type of game can be done casual or hard core.or something in-between. multiple play modes or multiple titles seems to be the way to reach everyone - casual and hardcore alike - for a given game idea.

the real trick is to make it realistic / believable enough for the hard core player, but accessible enough for the casual player. That's what i've striven for with Caveman. My problem there is that it appeals to non-gamers, not just casual gamers, due to the unique setting (i guess). folks who don't even know what "click to continue" means, where the ESC key is (or that there even is one!), and have never even seen a character creation screen.

an arcade version for casual gamers who don't know any better

This is a rather patronizing statement. People like different kind of games.This game is even too realistic and slow for some people (planning and collecting money for upgrades and judgeing trade routes and faction standings). My game is not a realistic ship simulation so that those guns took 2 min to reload isnt very important. I use historical ships for flavor, but I modify when I want for gameplay reasons.

But do you think the fights would be more strategic or fun if they were slower? You died from fewer hits? etc

Also:

"Realtime" doesnt mean "realistic time" when it comes to games. It means "not turnbased".

It seems you are commenting on a completely different game-to-be, which isnt very useful for me (i know of your love of realism from other thread). I will not have real ranges or reload times with this perspective (and almost no games have).That sounds like a interesting game, and by all means, make that game, but it should be clear that this game isn't that game at all.

GIVEN that this is the game I'm doing, what can be said about it?

What is unclear, what is unfun, what is fun? I also hope other people will comment to get different views. Does the looting system work? (other than being unrealistic). Do the radar scans work? Is it confusing? Everything will be polished of course but as it stands now?

This is a rather patronizing statement.

i'm simply speaking to the point that those familiar with the type of naval combat depicted will realize that the arcade style combat is unrealistic, while those unfamiliar with naval combat in that period may not.

But do you think the fights would be more strategic or fun if they were slower? You died from fewer hits? etc

i think that with the ability to run at multiple speeds, from slow strategic to fast arcade you can please all comers. those that want to make every move count can play slower. those that want a click fest can speed it up. the game works and runs the exact same way at all speeds. any game sped up enough eventually becomes arcade. and any game slowed down enough eventually becomes turn based. think about that one. might it be true?

the fact is that the tension from a slower naval engagement is a different type of gaming experience than the excitement of a clickfest. in the case of the engine you have here, the speed of the simulation is the only difference between what gameplay you get from it. run it slow, and you have an excellent naval wargame. run it fast and you have an excellent clickfest arcade game, so you can use it to make two games that appeal to two different user bases, or one game that plays in two modes that appeal to two different user bases.

"Realtime" doesnt mean "realistic time" when it comes to games. It means "not turnbased".

realtime was just an example of the slowest speed you might run. for a naval game you'd probably run it at say 60x for a relaxed pace of shooting every 2 seconds or so. or kick it up to 240x or higher for a bit of a clickfest.

GIVEN that this is the game I'm doing, what can be said about it?

since you're not having the ships behave as expected, you must define what gameplay you're looking for. if you're looking for arcade clickfest, you're spot on. i haven't looked at the aspects other than combat, but they're all pretty standard features, not that hard to balance. so its unlikely anything is out of whack.

I have time compression. I just doubt you can just change from x1 to x20 and get two working games (one simulation and one arcadish) in the way you describe. They do it like that in silent hunter for example (which has a good simulation feel to it, but I will never go for that for this game). But its not at all a "arcade game pleasing those kind of players" just because you increase the time compression. Its just used to get past the boring parts as those games are fairly realistic when it comes to movement, reloading speed etc.

But of course I get your point.

Noone else care to share some oppinions?

E

I've downloaded it, haven't gotten a chance to play it yet, I'll take a peek soon.